THE REAL LJ IDOL SEASON 8 WEEK 24: In Your Wheelhouse
ALL CHANGE!
Welcome aboard the Tech Express. We will be leaving the station momentarily; please remain in your seats with your belts fastened at all times. First stop will be Early Epiphany...
I had just entered my teens when I figured out what my vocation would be.
I was a hard-core math and science geek from a very early age, but had difficulty determining what specialty to focus on. The year I turned thirteen, my eldest sister started attending university to earn a nursing degree. The following Spring my parents went up to see her on Visiting Day, and brought me along so I could note what the campus had to offer. I was very excited when I learned the university had their own particle accelerator ("atom smasher"), and I eagerly looked forward to that portion of the tour.
It wasn't at all like what I expected, even though the staff ran an experiment while we were there. They still used film to record the particle tracks, so it would be several hours before they could see the results... and we would be long gone by then. The tour continued through the rest of the science buildings, but my interest waned by the minute... until we reached the computer center.
One of the system operators acted as a docent, and explained their mainframe was state-of-the-art: it could perform nearly 100,000 instructions per second, had a full megabyte of internal memory, plus several additional megabytes of storage in the form of both hard disks and tape drives. Most of the other members of the tour looked at the man as if he were speaking a foreign language... but I understood exactly what he was talking about. I was fascinated by the potential of such a device... and I asked the operator if he could demonstrate the machine's capabilities for me.
He sat me down in front of a terminal, pushed a few buttons... and started running a computerized STAR TREK game. I was now in command of the USS ENTERPRISE. My Mission: to hunt down Klingon and Romulan vessels across the galaxy, to vaporize them with phasers and photon torpedoes, to boldly blow shit up like it had never been blown up before!!
My parents continued on the tour without me, as I was glued to my chair for the next two hours, rerunning the "simulation" over and over. When they finally returned to take me home, they practically had to drag me away from the terminal, kicking and screaming.
It wasn't just the game that held my interest, though; It was the machine that ran it which utterly fascinated me. I understood that such a device could be reprogrammed to do all sorts of tasks, and I just had to know how to do that...
~*~*~
Watch the closing doors, please. Our next stop will be Higher Education...
I attended The Bronx High School of Science, and hung out in the computer lab at every opportunity. My experiences there confirmed what I already knew: I was born to work with these machines. The basic concepts of programming seemed as natural as breathing to me. There was no doubt that I would pursue a degree in Computer Sciences upon graduation.
When I entered college, I took to my computer courses like a duck to water. Complex programming concepts offered no challenges to me, and I didn't understand why my classmates frequently had difficulty with the material. Everything I was taught just made sense to me, and perhaps most important of all: I enjoyed it! There were so many things computers could do, and they were getting more powerful as time went on. The possibilities seemed endless...
~*~*~
Please be seated. We are now heading towards Career Fulfillment...
When I landed my first full-time job, I felt guilty... because I was being paid to play with toys! I eventually learned to enjoy the guilt, but it took a while...
In my career, I have dabbled in just about every aspect of computing imaginable. I've worked on mainframes and networks, programmed in over a dozen different languages, built PCs from base components... and perhaps most important of all, I've earned the title of "Tech Guru" from my peers. For many years in my office, if you had a computer problem or question, I was the guy you went to first. Though that function has now been taken over by a proper "Help Desk", co-workers still occasionally come to me for advice.
I have been working with computers for well over twenty years now; closer to twenty-five if you include some part-time consulting work I did before I got my degree. I have completely enjoyed my career, and never regretted pursuing it. Who could ask for anything more?
~*~*~
Next scheduled stop is Retirement-and-Pension. Be advised, however, that we have been informed that there may be a route change...
What I just told you is the unvarnished truth.
It is also a deception... because it doesn't tell the whole story.
Let's go back to the true beginning of this tale, take the local route and see what was missed in the rush.
A lonely boy in a house without privacy. The youngest of seven, there is no place in the home where he can be himself, find himself. When he tries to stand out, his mother denigrates him, compares him to his elder siblings and always finds him lacking. Outside the home, he fares no better -- both his peers and the older boys pick on him for his quiet manner, call him "retard" and other such pleasantries, beat him up when no adults are around. One of his earliest friends turns out to be a budding psychopath, who tries to crush his skull in the name of "fun"...
He can't trust his friends. He can't please his family.
So he becomes his own playmate... and starts telling stories to himself to pass the time.
A realistic utopia, ruled by benevolent god-kings who are bred, born and trained to mediate conflict before it starts. Utopia subverted -- Living Chaos comes from the outer dark and seizes the throne. A world of peace becomes a world of war...
~*~*~
I never meant to share these tales with anyone. They were my secret fantasies, a way of dealing with my stress and emotional trauma. They were perhaps the only things I could truly call my own in that crowded house. Everything else I had was shared in the name of "family"... but these stories were mine!
A generation trained for conquest. The Living Chaos orders that a fleet be built to sail the outer dark, to subdue other worlds. Just before the armada sails, something goes horribly wrong... and the world of war becomes a world gone mad...
~*~*~
I occasionally tried to put my ideas to paper, but the process was literally painful for me -- I used to suffer horrific hand cramps whenever I wrote for more than a few minutes. Typewriting wasn't any easier, as the arrangement of the keys bewildered me and I was prone to making spelling mistakes. Never mind the fact that the words on the paper barely resembled the ideas in my head.
The world is shattered. The Living Chaos goes back into the outer dark, abandoning the people to their fate. Only those on board the fleet escape Ragnarok... but most of them succumb to insanity and destroy themselves. One of the few survivors is a child prince from the imperial family... and his heritage shields him from the madness that has destroyed his kind. When he comes of age, he sails his vessel into the outer dark, seeking the being which caused the madness as well as other survivors...
~*~*~
The first time I shared these stories with anyone was on a Webelo camping trip. I didn't even particularly know the other boy all that well, I just knew he was smart and enjoyed reading science fiction. We were stuck waiting half-an-hour to go on a hike; there had been some sort of bureaucratic snafu, and all the adults were in the Campmaster's Office trying to clear it up. I spent a good fifteen minutes describing my story ideas to help pass the time.
The boy compared my tale to Frank Herbert's DUNE... and in favorable terms. I hadn't even heard of the book; I've since learned it's considered to be a milestone in the SF genre.
For the record, we were both ten years old at the time, and I had been working on my stories for at least four years...
The Prince finds many worlds, some of which have been influenced and destroyed by The Living Chaos. He encounters beings spawned by The Chaos and defeats each of them, but the true enemy evades him: The Chaos has taken a path that The Prince cannot follow himself...
~*~*~
When I was thirteen, I experienced the epiphany previously described. And every word I wrote was true: Computers just made sense to me, in a way that nothing ever had before. I learned everything I could about them, a process I found both easy and enjoyable. But there was one particular aspect to computers which I found especially appealing:
Through the art of programming, I could talk to these machines... and they would only reply in the fashion I chose.
They were the perfect companions for me, or so I thought. Yet when I was alone and had nothing better to do, I continued to tell myself those stories...
The Prince finds another member of his race... but the other fellow is utterly mad, and has enslaved a world to torment it. With careful planning and great daring, The Prince frees the world, captures the madman... and heals him of his insanity. As penance for his misdeeds, the former tyrant is sent on a quest to pursue The Living Chaos and destroy It... A quest the reformed tyrant accepts willingly...
~*~*~
The first time I actually set one of my tales to paper was in high school. The young man editing the student literary journal was dating my youngest sister, and though we were not friends I thought we were on friendly terms. It took me nearly a month to assemble a rough draft, and I approached the older boy timidly when I handed it in for review.
He sat me down and proceeded to ridicule every single sentence of my piece in front of other people. When I objected to the obvious emotional abuse, the editor claimed he was doing this to "find the flaws in the work"... but he never offered any advice as to how to improve my writing. He just continued to publicly mock me and my effort until I walked out.
Is it any wonder I never considered writing again for well over a decade?
Yet the stories continued to evolve in my head...
The Prince goes on to find other survivors. Though they are insufficient in numbers to rebuild their race, they band together to help other worlds defend against the spawn of Chaos. The main plot now follows the former tyrant, in hot pursuit of The Living Chaos. They meet, they fight, The Chaos is driven off... but It will not die...
~*~*~
I didn't have very many friends in college, and I shared my tales with only three of them. All of them told me the same thing: "You should write them down! GET THEM PUBLISHED!" I always refused, but I never explained why; I was too embarrassed to tell anyone of my experience in high school. I might have grand ideas, and could explain them aloud quite well... but I obviously had no talent for writing. None at all.
I gave up all hope of ever seeing my stories in print. I concentrated on my studies instead, and learned all I could about computers. I understood these machines far better than I understood people. In many ways, computers became my best friends:
Computers never denigrated me, never called me "worthless" or "retard". They never threw stones at me or beat me up, never publicly ridiculed me, never demanded from me more than what I was willing to give.
They never talked back to me.
So I talked to myself instead...
The dance is repeated many times: The Chaos finds a new world to dominate, the tyrant-turned-hero arrives afterward and teaches the residents how to fight back. The Chaos flees, and the cycle starts anew... until the day comes when The Chaos stops running and turns to fight instead ...
~*~*~
I never had a problem with computers in my career... but I always had problems with people. At my first part-time job, the department head offered me a full-time position if I could complete an assignment for him... and then he reneged on the deal. During my first week in civil service, one of my office mates literally backed me against a wall and demanded that I tell him why he hadn't received the printer he had ordered three months previously. He became furious when I said I had no idea what he was talking about, and I thought he was going to assault me before I ran out of the room in tears. Every time a manager or executive visited my work area, my guts would twist up in knots; I was certain they were going to yell at me, though I had done nothing wrong...
I started seeing a therapist to deal with my social anxiety, but for many years I made very little headway. As far as I was concerned, people couldn't ever be trusted. Machines were my only real friends. Them, and the characters in my tales.
The reformed villain flees for his life, but eventually renews his pursuit. He finds many worlds destroyed by The Chaos, and he grieves for each of them. He finds his enemy again, and begins the fight once more. But he has grown weak with age, and his enemy has become so strong. It is only a matter of time before he loses completely...
~*~*~
Over a decade back, I became friendly with the owner of a bookstore near my workplace. He made arrangements with the editor at a major publishing house to hold classes on creative writing. Out of boredom and curiosity, I took the course twice... and each time I got favorable reviews for my work. Several members of the class thought one of my pieces was worthy of publication as-is.
The editor didn't agree. He thought I should polish the story a bit more before submitting it.
I never did anything with that tale. It's still sitting on my hard drive, untouched after all these years.
The class couldn't be right. It made no sense. The only thing I was good with was computers. Everybody had told me that for years...
OK, not *EVERYBODY* -- My shrink did try to encourage me. But I was terrified of being hurt again. The only person I felt I could really trust was me, and even then I frequently doubted myself.
The reformed villain assembles a desperate plan, one he knows he will not live to see completed. The crux of his stratagem are two unusually talented young boys; each has something the other lacks, but together they just might do the impossible. The Chaos uncovers the plan before it reaches fruition, and sends Its minions to murder the boys...
~*~*~
I got involved in Idol last year purely as a form of therapy. I approached the competition this year in similar terms. Yet it rapidly turned into something else...
I started talking about my involvement in Idol with friends, family and co-workers. I showed samples of my work to several people, gave out links to my journal to several others... and the response has been unanimously positive. One of my co-workers has "threatened" to get on my case, as he thinks my stories should have been in print years ago. But here's the thing which truly turned my head around:
I've got competitors giving me advice on how to hone my craft further. They already think I'm extremely talented... but they want to help me become even better.
It has been said the highest compliment one can ever receive is praise and support from a rival.
The boys evade the assassins, and grow into men of power. The quest is passed to the next generation, and the battle begins anew. Time will tell whether our heroes will succeed, or whether Chaos will reign supreme...
~*~*~
All through my adult life, I thought I had just one talent: computers. For me it was easy work... and easy meant "safe". With all the troubles I had in my youth, safety and security meant everything.
By contrast, writing was always a struggle, an absolute chore. The first time I tried putting my work to paper, I got hurt badly... so I was seriously discouraged from exploring that path for a very long time. Besides, these stories were private, a part of me in every sense of the term. I only shared them with the few people I trusted. To share them with the world would mean *LOTS* of people would get to know me... and I dreaded that. I didn't like myself much; why would anyone else like me?
Except... people do like me and my stories. Family, friends, co-workers, competitors... I don't understand it, but I can't deny it any longer.
And I won't deny something else: I'm tired of only talking to machines. I miss human interaction... and I'm sick of being lonely.
Creative writing is not only a form a therapy for me; it's a way for me to connect with humanity again. And it seems I'm rather talented at it. I'm concentrating on Idol right now to hone my skills further, but once the competition is done this season, I'm going to seriously pursue getting my works published for money.
This is a new track for me... but it's one I want to explore. I know it won't be easy... but I've heard the really good things in life are the ones you have to work for.
I think the good guys are going to win this time...
This post is an entry for THE REAL LIVEJOURNAL IDOL SEASON EIGHT. If you enjoyed reading it, please vote for it by clicking here. My check box is thirteenth from the top.